“That’s as may be,” she said. “But I was too frightened at what I’d done to fish for you.”
“P’r’aps that’s ’ow ye caught me then,” he said. “And p’r’aps that’s ’ow I must needs forgive ye!”
For the trip to town was so deftly managed from a neighbouring station in the early hours of the Sunday, that nobody guessed it had taken place; and on the evening of the same day upon the old bridge, Letty swore a bold, brave lie that she had lost what she declared she had never tried to win. The laugh against her was loud, but then so was her own in reply, and when, six weeks later, instead of accepting Mr. Lambert’s gloves, she accepted Bob Frewin himself, she was too happy to care which way the laugh went. But to tell the truth, folk are good-natured enough; and if the girls suspected Letty’s little fraud, and, nudging one another, declared she was a clever one, they had no objection to her triumph, for Charlie Lambert was the better match of the two, and he was left for somebody else.
Two women and a lad came down the hill towards the stream on a frosty January evening at sunset.
It had been a good typical Christmas, and though the snow had partially disappeared, the river ran grey in the cold air, and the frost sparkled on the twigs of willows and on the brown stalks of tall water plants upon the banks.
The lad lounged easily along with his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his pipe in his mouth; but the women bore burthens—one a bundle of brushwood on her head, the other a sack of potatoes—and as they reached the bridge they stopped to rest them awhile on its old brick parapet.
“’Old yer row, do!” the boy was saying. “What do it matter to you whether old Jeremiah ’ave a-turned me off agin or no? Ain’t I my own master?”
“Oh, ye’re yer own master safe enough,” retorted the woman, a sharp-featured body of middle age. “There ain’t nobody as ’ll worrit ’emselves much over ye now ye’ve put yer pore mother underground. If that’s what ye wanted when ye set to work to break ’er ’eart, why ye’ve got it.”
“Well, I want it now anyways,” retorted the lad with a brutal laugh.
“You’re an ungrateful beast, that’s what ye are!” said the woman shrilly. “I’d ’ave guv ye bite and sup for a night or two, for my pore sister’s sake, till ye got work again; but I shan’t now.”